Letters

November 27, Thursday, Thanksgiving Day.

Morning: I hear the screech owl, the great-horned owl, the Cooper’s hawk, Carolina wren, white-throated sparrow, chirps of the cardinal, red-breasted nuthatch, the cooo of the mourning dove; songs of rooster, flicker, dark-eyed junco. Titmouse, blue jay.

Wind, barely a breeze, whispers haaaaaaaa in wind language, lovingly. Tranquility. Peace.

I’m alive — ping of chill in the air, my skin zings.

This sacred silence is why I moved here 40 years ago. But it’s completely gone now. And why? Was our designation of “green community” just a photo-op? A lie? Words co-opted like the phrase “all natural”?

House finch, red-winged blackbird, turkey, goldfinch, Eastern bluebird. Glory. I’m evanescent. Living. The Earth breathes, and I breath with it; the breath of our Mother Earth, through me and in me, cleans out the dust of this noisy, cacophonous, stressful, polluted existence. I am free.

I wander inside, light the language of fire, open every window so I can still revel in this rare happening — this luscious serenity I’m starved for still washing over me: nourishing, royal peace.

I’m grateful that on this holiday there are no leaf blowers. One of only 57 holidays and Sundays out of 365 days in the year when I can live without the deep, outrageous, inescapable, cortisol-overloading trauma of that damaging, super-low-frequency, higher-than-noise-ordinances-allow noise.

Still, I’m grateful for today. Grateful for these 2.5 hours out of the last 8,760 that I can enjoy being outside.

Please, Town Board and law enforcement, give me more. Please, give the people who are traumatized by that life-destroying “infernal gadget” a peaceful life here in this so-called “green community.” I and so, so many others will be so grateful. Happy Thanksgiving.

Sunday morning, November 30, three days after Thanksgiving.

I had to go out this morning, hand over a leaflet that explains the gas-powered leaf blower law to someone who was out ruining this quiet Sunday morning. I told him that someone could call the police on him. He thanked me and put the leaf blower away.

I came home. Now there’s someone else out there, or maybe two or three people, with their inconsiderate leaf blowing.

I’m going out again. Is this what my life in this god-forsaken community has come to?

Suzanne P. Ruggles

Westhampton